Uber CEO: 'When People Perceive You As Big, You're Not Allowed To Be Scrappy-Fierce'

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is ready to play nice -- or at least talk about it.

The car-service startup's founder said Monday morning that his company is viewed as a bully -- and he as its Darth Vader -- because it's a big player that hasn't let go of its "scrappy-fierce" attitude.

Kalanick waxed poetic about his "tough" earlier days, when he spent six years growing his previous startup, Red Swoosh, which sold to
Akamai Technologies for $19 million in 2007.

The same attitude that he said helped him succeed before now makes Uber look too aggressive, he admitted.

"That scrappy fierceness works until you get big," Kalanick said on stage at TechCrunch's Disrupt conference in San Francisco. "And when you get big, being scrappy like that and perfectionist and pushing all the way feels uncomfortable.

"People look at you like the big guy now and not the scrappy guy," he said. "It requires a different way of doing things and running your business. ... You have to communicate differently. We're not there yet. We want to get there."

Kalanick did not specify how the company might change its ways to be seen as a more benevolent overlord. But its fiefdom is large and growing: the company has "hundreds of thousands" of drivers on its platform, and are adding around 50,000 drivers a month, Kalanick said.

The company is growing faster in Europe than in the U.S., and its recent Beijing launch is one of the fastest-growing Uber markets, Kalanick said. And while he declined to specify how much of the company he still owns, he didn't downplay it either: "I own a lot."

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